


Dreamless Sleep

by SciFiDVM



Series: In Your Dreams [4]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Gen, My head canon, Pottsboro to Willoughby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 05:24:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13851012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SciFiDVM/pseuds/SciFiDVM
Summary: The journey from Pottsboro to Willoughby continues for Charlie and Monroe, and they encounter some Patriots for the first time. In the process, Charlie learns some things about Monroe and about herself.





	Dreamless Sleep

“Wake up.” Monroe’s voice was hushed yet urgent as he nudged Charlie’s shoulder.

The tone brought Charlie to instant alertness. He was not waking her up to take her shift on watch. Something was wrong. She was on her feet with her weapons at the ready in little more than a heartbeat.

“How many and where?” She asked in a whisper as she surveyed their camp site. She hadn’t noticed anything amiss yet, but she found her instincts trusting her traveling companion’s assessment without question. No matter what she thought of him, there was no denying his ability as a fighter and a survivor.

“At least four. They’re trying to flank us.” He responded with a steely calmness.

Charlie nodded and together they casualy stepped away from the back of the wagon and out of the direct light of the fire. As they walked, she heard the faintest trace of footfalls rustling the dried grass at the edge of the little clearing they were camped in. “Think it’s the guys from earlier?” She asked quietly.

“Be a pretty big coincidence if they aren’t.” He answered with a shrug.

“They must have recognized you after all.”

“I doubt it.” He paused and listened for a long second. “There can’t be more than six of them. They knew who I was, they would have sent a lot more men.”

Charlie snorted. They had no posters about her, and since she wasn’t wearing a name tag, no one knew who she was. A random young female traveling companion usually didn’t warrant much consideration in terms of how many men it would take to subdue her. That meant that whoever these guys were, they had assumed it would take five to six guys to take out Monroe. She knew that. That meant he had to know that too. She wondered how many men his deluded and self-aggrandizing mind had calculated as an appropriate sized force to attempt to take him down.

“Then why are they here?” Charlie sighed. She suspected he just didn’t want to have to accept the blame for being the reason they were about to be attacked.

“No one has shot us yet, so they may just be investigating who we are.” He offered.

Then they both clearly heard the sound of a blade being pulled from a sheath. The noise was slight, but their ears had been searching for exactly such a sound. Charlie raised an eyebrow at Monroe.

“Or they’re planning to kill us for intruding on whatever the hell it is they have going on around here.” He shrugged and turned his body about ninety degrees away from her as they started to hear other, less covert noises coming from the edge of the clearing.

Charlie rolled her eyes. “Or they recognized you.”

The wagon was about ten feet away from them to her left and providing cover on that side. With a heavy sigh, she found herself adjusting her position and squaring up into her fighting stance back to back with Monroe. He had done the same. Each looked only forward, scanning their field of engagement. They both leaned back slightly until their shoulders started to graze each other’s. It let them have a physical sense of exactly where the other person was without having to turn to look at them. Then the muted light from their fire on the other side of the wagon illuminated the first khaki clad man breaking from the cover of the trees and making a charge at them.

He came at Charlie first, probably assuming she could be quickly incapacitated or that her male companion would be distracted trying to defend her. To Monroe’s credit and the attacker’s dismay, Charlie was surprisingly pleased to find that Monroe held his position and let her field her assailant’s initial attack on her own. He had come at her with a bowie knife. The man must have assumed that her sword was purely for show. She quickly corrected that misconception. As soon as he got within range, he made a quick underhanded striking move with the extended knife. Charlie easily blocked the knife’s trajectory away from her with her sword, the momentum of her swing plucking the knife from the man’s hand to send it flying away toward the empty wagon and then bringing the sword back around in a slash that completely severed his forearm. The attacker screamed and immediately clasped his other hand to the bleeding stump where his lower arm had been. With his attention diverted to his injury, Charlie quickly brought her sword around for another blow that sliced down along the muscular junction where his neck met his shoulder, followed by a stabbing thrust into the man’s chest. Her sword slid in between ribs and buried deep until the point hit his spinal column. Charlie give it a forceful twist and the man gurgled some incoherent noises at her before she leaned forward and used a boot to his abdomen to shove his convulsing body off her blade. As the corpse crumpled to the ground, she resumed her stance and leaned back until her shoulders hit the solid mass of tense muscle that was Monroe’s back. Their relative positions reconfirmed, she felt a flutter reverberating through his taught body. He was laughing.

“This is gonna be fun.” There was pure glee in Monroe’s voice as four more men broke cover from the woods and ran toward them. They simultaneously pushed off each other to surge forward and intercept their attackers.

The fight didn’t take long. Two had gone after Monroe at once as one launched an assault on Charlie and the last cautiously stood back a short way, waiting for enough space to open in the melee for him to have a clear line of attack. Monroe jabbed and slashed at the men near him, scoring some flesh wounds and driving them back. They seemed more wary in their attack on him than the first man had been coming after Charlie. He’d take one or two steps forward to engage them, but then returned to his position. He was not stupid or naïve enough to be tricked into following them forward out of position and leaving both himself and Charlie with their sixes exposed.

Charlie did the same as she parried and slashed at her attacker. The man had a rudimentary skill set with a sword, as if he’d had lots of technical training, but no actual experience using the weapon in a fight. She quickly managed to land a crippling slice across his thigh that sent him to his knees. As soon as he looked up, her blade slashed across his throat. Before his body was fully prone on the ground, the next man had jumped into the fray to replace his fallen comrade. Charlie parried with him for a few seconds before she was able to wedge her sword at the point where the blade and the hilt guard of his sword met. With a twisting swing, she ripped the sword from his hand and sent it careening across the clearing. He retreated a few steps as he pulled a knife from his belt. Charlie squared herself again as the man charged at her. Then, just as he came within range of her sword, he stopped abruptly. The tip of a sword was protruding from the middle of his chest. He fell to his knees, revealing Monroe standing behind him, his sword plunged into the uniformed man’s back. The body lolled forward and slid off Monroe’s sword. He wiped the weapon off on the fabric of the dead man’s pants before sheathing it.

“That one was mine.” Charlie whined.

“You’re welcome.” Monroe grinned.

Charlie sneered at him. As he had done, she cleaned her sword off on the drab colored clothing of the dead soldier in front of her before returning it to the sheath at her hip. “I didn’t need your help.” She muttered petulantly as she knelt and started rifling through the dead man’s pockets.

“I know.” Monroe said honestly as he grabbed another body and rolled it over on the ground so that it was face up, before rifling through its pockets. “But I had a clear shot too. So I took it.”

Charlie wanted to argue more, but found that there really wasn’t any issue to press. He legitimately did seem to accept the fact that she could hold her own in a fight. She was so used to constantly having to prove herself to her uncle, that she felt strange not having to be defensive about her actions. “Was that all of them?”

“Seems like.” He paused and assessed the situation again. “Haven’t seen or heard anybody else.”

“Who are these guys?” Charlie queried as she pulled a small pouch of diamonds from her victim’s cargo pant pocket. She’d also found a few 9mm hand gun magazines, zip ties, and a pair of sun glasses.

“Gotta be the same fuckers that issued those wanted posters.” Monroe kicked a toe at the American flag patch on the shoulder of the man’s tan colored uniform.

“Yeah, but what do they want? What’s their plan?” Charlie rolled the body she was inspecting over onto its back to check the front pockets.

“Shit if I know.” Monroe answered. “But I’ve got a sickening feeling that we’ll find out in a couple days.”

They were starting to be able to guess what the small American flag insignias on their map meant. The soldier-manned check point they had passed earlier in the day had been roughly where one of the marks had been on their pilfered map. The bounty hunters they had stolen it from must have had, at least, some sort of working relationship with this group claiming to be the United States government and issuing the wanted posters. It didn’t take a huge leap of faith to presume that their map might have come from the same source. All of which was well and good, except for the fact that the largest flag logo on the entire damn map of Texas happened to be placed right next to the little town of Willoughby.

Charlie shook off the nervous feeling in her gut that had started popping up nearly every time she thought about her family and the small town where they were hiding out. Returning her focus to the body in front of her, she found a pistol in a shoulder holster strapped across his chest. She pulled it out, checked the chamber, removed the magazine, noted the number of bullets inside, slammed the magazine back in place, released the slide, and shoved it into the back of her pants as she stood. She was about to move on to the next body when she glanced over to find Monroe staring at her. “What?” She snapped. If Sebastian fucking Monroe though he was going to berate her for looting a dead body when he was doing the same thing…

“That thing you just did… That was hot.”

After a millisecond of shock, Charlie’s face dropped to a scowl that said she was clearly not amused.

“I’m just saying.” He shrugged and went back to pilfering the deceased.

“You are seriously fucked up, Monroe.” She glared at him for a moment. When she saw him deliberately shrug again in agreement, she rolled her eyes. She hated to admit it, but she’d started to enjoy the ridiculous banter they had begun to develop the last few days. Whatever part of her travelling companion had once been a politically minded statesman had apparently disintegrated with the rest of Philadelphia when those nukes had hit. Now he had no verbal filter. He was brash and crude, and he generally said or did whatever came to mind for him at any given moment. Charlie had started to find the constant stream profanity, depravity, and sarcasm he spewed to be humorous more than offensive. She hated to admit it, but he had been right. They were getting along just fine.

“But come on. You can’t blame me.” Monroe looked back at her until she made eye contact with him. “You have to admit that a fight like that… Doesn’t it get you… _worked up_?”

“No. It doesn’t.” Charlie spat back. But it was all lies. She knew exactly what he meant, and it totally did. But damned if she was going to admit that to him. She refused to believe that his other assertion, that she reminded him of himself, could possibly be true. She refused to believe they were anything alike.

At that moment, they both rolled their respective corpse onto their backs and began turning out the pockets in a nearly identical manner. _God dammit_ , Charlie groaned internally as she realized the synchronicity in how they worked after a battle.

After they finished stripping the bodies of anything potentially useful, they dragged the corpses into a pile at the edge of the woods. As they finished hauling the last body, Charlie asked, “A couple of them had guns. Why didn’t they just shoot us?”

“Didn’t see anything that says they made us at that checkpoint. If they didn’t know who we were, they might have been hoping to take us alive so they could interrogate us.”

“If they really cared about strangers coming into the area, why didn’t they just detain us at the checkpoint?” Charlie pointed out, still not convinced that he hadn’t been recognized.

They had been stopped on the road earlier in the day by a small force of men dressed as soldiers in khaki colored basic uniforms sporting the USA flag on them. They had expected trouble when they’d gotten about a half mile out and had seen a larger version of the star spangled banner waving from a pole in front of the small recently erected guard shack off to the side of the road. They had weighed the risks of how suspicious it would look if they turned around suddenly versus their chances of getting through the checkpoint unmolested. Monroe had strongly pushed for taking their chances with the guards rather than turning around. Charlie had ultimately agreed, but she wasn’t as sure. Admittedly the sketch of him on his wanted poster wasn’t the most accurate representation of President Monroe to start with. The man beside her also bore little resemblance to the former President. He was dirty and scruffy with his weeks’ worth of stubbly beard and shaggy unkempt hair partially covered in a baseball cap they had found with the old bounty hunters’ stuff. He also lacked the distinctive M tattoo on his forearm that the flyer had said to look for. Though Charlie figured that anyone suspicious enough to check his arm might not believe that the fact that there was a big scar in the exact spot where the tattoo should be was just a coincidence. They quickly came up with a cover story about being bounty hunters looking for a pay day out here where they heard there were some big fish that needed catching. They had all the gear to look the part, and after a brief stop and inspection by the guards, they had been allowed to pass. None of the soldiers nor anything about the post gave away its reason for being there. They had remained on edge for a number of miles after clearing the area, but when there was no sign of trouble or pursuit, they had assumed that they had truly made it safely through.

Monroe shrugged, acknowledging that he didn’t have any more answers about their attackers than she did.

“I think we’re not too far from a small town. Maybe they were afraid that gun shots in the night would alert the locals to whatever they’re doing.” Charlie postulated

“That is a possibility.” Monroe nodded. “In which case, these guys probably aren’t too far from their back up. We should get out of here before their buddies realize they aren’t coming back and start looking for us.”

“Good point.” Charlie agreed. They set about harnessing the horses, which were already somewhat spooked by the recent fighting and the smell of blood in the air.

It was still early in the night, not too much past ten o’clock by the time they had the team hitched back to the wagon. Neither the horses nor either human had had much of a chance to rest before they were back on the road.

“I don’t think we should stop in the open again tonight.” Charlie offered.

“Me neither. Bastards are damn likely to try and take another shot at us after what we did to their friends.” Monroe agreed. After a few beats he added, “Horses are gonna need a rest though. Got any bright ideas how we make that happen without leaving ourselves as sitting ducks?”

“Maybe…” Charlie began to think out loud.

 

…….

 

They pulled the wagon to a stop in front of a boarding house in Waco, Texas just before midnight. It was a Friday night and the hotel’s bar was still busy enough that their arrival didn’t turn any heads. Since she was less likely to be recognized, Charlie entered the establishment and arranged for a room for the night using the dead soldiers’ diamonds, while Monroe helped the stable boy store the wagon and get the horses settled.

Hiding in plain sight was a gamble. Their map showed no flag markers associated with the town, and Monroe regaled Charlie with some stories of Waco’s infamous past before the blackout. They hadn’t been big fans of the government back then, and it didn’t seem that a little thing like a world-wide loss of electricity had done much to change that. There wasn’t a soldier in sight since they had entered the town boundaries. That didn’t mean that they were safe though. They had no idea how widely those wanted fliers had been disseminated, and even here, people could be more than willing to work with this new government for a payday the size of the one being offered for Monroe’s head. Charlie had been nursing a glass of whisky at the bar while waiting for her outlaw accomplice, when that thought sent a chill up her spine. Then she instantly scowled into her glass. The thought of Monroe’s severed head had elicited an instinctual revulsion and distress in her. That was more than a little awkward, considering that just two weeks ago she had been determined to be the one to violently end the man’s life herself.

Charlie sighed, swallowed the rest of her whisky in a long drag, and signaled the bartender to refill the glass. Getting drunk seemed a lot more reasonable than letting herself think about the knot of concern in her gut for the man she had so recently wanted to kill.

She was on her third glass when the front door opened and Monroe entered the bar. She caught a glimpse of his profile out of the corner of her eye as he’d walked in. Despite the unkempt appearance, his swagger and presence that screamed self-confidence and importance were unmistakable. His demeanor was so identifiable to her, that she nearly panicked for a brief moment, sure that other bar patrons would also be able to identify him. Then she realized that everybody there seemed to be pointedly minding their own business and uninterested in the new customer. She took another sip of her drink and let the calming warmth spread through her.

As she lowered the glass from her lips, Monroe’s scanning eyes sighted on hers. His stare dropped briefly to the glass in her hand, and then he cocked an eyebrow. She rolled her eyes then gave a slight toss of her head indicating the direction of their rented room. He looked in that direction, but then returned his gaze to the glass and gave her a look that reminded her of a begging puppy. She shrugged and rolled her eyes again. As he crossed the bar in the direction she had indicated, she handed a few small diamonds to the bartender and left her seat at the bar with a fresh bottle of whisky.

They met in the corridor leading toward the guest rooms, and Monroe quickly took the bottle from her hands. “Guess this’ll do.” He popped the cork and took a drag straight from the bottle as Charlie stopped them at the door to their room and stuck the key into the lock. He dropped the bottle from his mouth to speak as Charlie opened the door and they both took a step inside.

There was only one bed.

The door swung closed behind them and latched. Charlie took the whisky bottle from his hand, tilted it back, and chugged about a quarter of it. Then she shoved it back against his chest. Once he wrapped his hands around it, she let go and walked straight toward the bed. “I’m going to sleep. You can do whatever you want. If you think we need to stay on watch, wake me up when it’s my turn.” She kicked off her boots and climbed under the covers without sparing Monroe a backward glance.

“This is some twisted sitcom level shit right here.” Monroe mumbled under his breath.

“It’s only awkward if you think there’s even a snowball’s chance in hell that something is gonna happen in this bed besides me sleeping in it.” Charlie announced into the pillow without looking at him.

After a two beat pause, he downed a gulp of whisky and started to take a step forward.

“There’s not.” Charlie announced clearly without turning to look at him.

He stood still and innocently raised his hands in surrender. Then he deliberately stepped to the side and took a seat in the plastic chair sitting by the dilapidated old desk in the far corner of the room.

It was about four hours later when Charlie was woken to the mattress shifting and her covers being pulled away.

“No sign of trouble.” Monroe slurred as he started crawling into the bed from the far side.

Charlie scrambled away from him, the blankets tangling her legs and causing her to nearly fall to the floor in her haste to escape. Before she had even fully righted herself, she heard his metered breaths relax and become heavy with sleep. She looked over toward the desk and shook her head. The whisky bottle sat there, virtually empty. She took a seat in the chair by the desk and glowered at her companion. He had passed out where he fell face first on the mattress, one arm still dangling off the side and covers all askew. Getting that drunk while on watch was stupid and risky. She had no idea what had possessed him to do it.  

Four hours of a very boring watch later, Charlie understood exactly why he’d done it. He had slept through the night without a hint of a nightmare or any sign that he dreamed at all. It was the first time she’d seen him sleep dreamlessly since they had teamed up. She knew from experience that you could drink yourself to a point of numbness when sleep won’t otherwise let you forget the horrors of the day. It was the coping mechanism of choice for her uncle as well. She remembered how she’d found Monroe in New Vegas, trying to fight and drink himself to death. It had seemed a pointless and miserable existence at the time. She now realized that it was the only way he had to cope. The only way to stop the horror of the deaths, losses, and failures that haunted him in his sleep was apparently to drink them away. In New Vegas, he’d found a life that allowed him to do that. Until he’d found her.

At no point since they’d teamed up had it been safe enough for him to let his guard down and drink. Between needing to potentially protect himself from her and protecting her from everything else in the universe that had apparently painted a bullseye on all things Matheson, he couldn’t take the risk. He let the night terrors take him each night when he tried to sleep, so that he would be in a position to help her. She started to feel guilty for the suffering he endured on her behalf.

Charlie shook her head. She was probably giving him too much credit. That man didn’t have an altruistic bone in his body, she was sure of it. He had a plan, and he was tolerating a calculated level of hardship to accomplish said plan. That’s all it was. He didn’t care about her, and he certainly wasn’t going to be legitimately sacrificing himself for her. That was a fact. She hated the way he was weaseling into her psyche. There were moments where she caught herself actually feeling bad for him. If his plan had been to manipulate her, then it was working. She needed to be less gullible.

With that thought, she walked over and shook his shoulder. “Time to get up Monroe.” She got no response, so she shook harder. “We’re burning daylight. You need to get up.” He slept on. Exasperated, Charlie had an idea. She took two steps away from the bed, then pulled the gun from the back of her pants, clicked off the safety, and cocked the hammer as she pointed it at him.

Monroe’s eyes flickered open. “I thought we were past this.”

Charlie immediately clicked the safety back on and shoved the gun back in the hem of her jeans. “Figured that would wake you up.”

He yawned and stretched like a lazy cat laying in the sun. The movement made his shirt ride up and expose most of his rippled abdominal muscles. He let his outstretched arms settle with his hands clinging to the top of the headboard. Charlie wasn’t sure if the pompous bastard was trying to act casually seductive, or if he was still too intoxicated to realize he was posing gratuitously. Either way, she was just about done with his antics this morning. She threw his leather jacket at him and it hit him in the stomach.

“We need to get going.” She nearly growled at him.

He sat up and wiped bleary eyes.

“It looks like the weather’s about to turn to crap, and we’ve still got a few days to go before we get to Willoughby.” She continued as she pulled on her jacket. “I’m going to go get the team harnessed and see if there’s anywhere to grab some extra supplies. Do you think you can be ready to go by the time I get back?”

“Yes mom.” He groaned at her and stood from the bed, stretching again.

Charlie caught him eyeing the scant few ounces of liquor left in the bottle from last night, and she quickly grabbed the bottle to take it with her. “Get cleaned up and get your shit together Monroe.”

 

…….

 

Charlie had met some notable resistance in trying to buy supplies. The town’s people were highly wary of strangers, and Charlie was starting to believe that the khaki soldiers’ appearance was at least part of the issue. She hadn’t gotten more than a few rolls of bread for her efforts. Trying to procure gear for the upcoming inclement weather was out of the question. She returned to the hotel’s stable and started harnessing the horses. She was just getting the pair attached to the wagon when a very hungover Monroe appeared to help. He had settled things up for their room, and they were ready to go within minutes.

She climbed up into the driver’s seat and started to take up the reins. As trashed as Monroe looked, she assumed he’d finally give in and let her drive. Of course, he climbed up behind her and used his hip to shove her over on the bench before taking the reins from her hands. Charlie glared at him. He looked like shit, even with the pair of aviator sunglasses she’d taken off the soldier’s body yesterday covering his eyes. The pop of the reins snapping over the horses’ rumps appeared to be a loud enough noise to make him wince.

“How come you never let me drive?” Charlie asked in a huff.

“It’s my wagon.” He responded flatly as he steered the team out onto the street.

“No it’s not.” She snapped back in a voice loud enough that it seemed to cause him pain. She lowered her voice before adding, “You stole it.”

“Exactly. _I_ stole it. That makes it mine.” He tipped the glasses forward so she could see his bloodshot eyes over the top of them, and he gave her a smug smile.

Charlie rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

They both got quiet as the team picked up the pace into a steady trot along the main road out of town. Charlie assumed that he was nursing his hangover with the silence, and she was dwelling on her revelation from earlier that morning and attempting to reestablish some of her walls of animosity against her former nemesis. She was not going to let him sweet talk her into such a position of complacency and acceptance towards him again. None of his sarcastic quips or raunchy stories were going to make her feel one ounce of emotion for him. Not again. No way.

“I drive because it’s how I make sure that nothing happens.” His voice was barely above a whisper and had a rough gravely cadence that she knew had nothing to do with the previous night’s whisky.

Charlie slowly turned her head so that she was looking directly at him.

He was still facing the road ahead, and the large lenses of the sunglasses blocked her from seeing his eyes as he quietly continued, “Before the Blackout, my whole family died in a car wreck while I was overseas. Mom, Dad, and both my little sisters got taken out by a drunk driver while they were going to see a movie.” He swallowed hard. “Always wondered if it would have been different if I’d been there. If I’d been driving, could I have avoided that asshole or whatever, ya know?” After a few deep breaths, he continued, “So, yeah. I’m gonna drive the whole way there. That way if something gets fucked up or goes to shit, I don’t gotta wonder what if.”

Charlie found that her mouth was agape and she quickly forced her lips closed. What the fuck was that? She had no idea what to say or do in that moment, so she silently nodded, indicating that she understood and wouldn’t challenge him on the topic again. How was she supposed to respond to that? Why did he tell her that? Was that story even real? She had accused him of being able to wrangle up tears on cue, but he had promised not to lie to her, and so far she hadn’t seen anything to make her suspect that he would fabricate a story like that.

“You didn’t have to tell me all that.” She said quietly.

“I told you. You ask, I answer. That’s the game.” He shrugged.

He could try to play it off all he wanted, but she wasn’t buying it. “That…” Charlie’s words almost stalled on her. “That story isn’t just part of some game.”

He looked like he was making up some snarky retort, but then deflated. “That’s why I told it to you.” He sighed before continuing, “The only thing worse than having all this awful shit inside that you don’t want to talk about, is when you realize that it’s been a damn long time since anyone gave enough of a crap about you to even bother asking about any of it. Figured you might be able to relate.”

She wanted to snap back at him that their situations were completely different. She had a family that cared about her. She tried to think of an example that would clearly refute his assumption. Her heart sank as she realized that she was having a hard time coming up with one. It wasn’t that her family didn’t care about her, it’s just that they all cared about other people and other things more than they did about her lately. And he was right. That did hurt.

He correctly interpreted her long moment of introspective silence and almost nervously offered, “So I know you hate me and whatever, but you handled those guys last night alright and I respect the whole quiet, no nonsense thing you’ve got going…” He waved his hands in circles in her general direction as he said the last part.

Charlie raised a confused but dubious eyebrow at him.

“Guess I’m trying to say that I appreciate your company during all this. So I’m not gonna pry and ask you about your personal shit, but if you got anything you wanna talk about with somebody that isn’t gonna get all judgey about the fact that you got demons, have at it.”

Charlie’s face stuck in its confused glare of an expression. “Are you really expecting me to get all emotional and open up to you about touchy feely crap?”

Monroe shrugged.

“Like, are we besties now?” Charlie gave him a sarcastic grin and cheerily continued, “Because I have really missed having somebody to talk with about clothes and boys. And other girl stuff like periods…”

“Oh my god!” Monroe cringed away from her as if she were contagious. “No! That’s not…”

Charlie chuckled.

Even though she couldn’t see his eyes behind the mirrored lenses, she could tell he was sneering at her. “Fine. I try to be nice for once and this is what I get. Shooting people is so much easier than putting up with them.” The last part was a nearly incoherent grumble.

Charlie wasn’t entirely sure that he had been joking. As awkward as this whole thing was, she did kind of appreciate what he had been trying to do for her. She swallowed hard and after a moment groaned out, “I hate to admit this, but this trip hasn’t exactly been…” She stopped and pursed her lips in a grimace that suggested what she was about to say actually pained her. “You. You haven’t exactly been what I was expecting.”

“I’m not sure if you’re complimenting or insulting me with that.” He smiled weakly at her.

“Me neither.” She shrugged.

“Fair enough.” He shrugged in response.

With that, they silently rode toward the large grey storm clouds growing across the horizon.


End file.
